Having a "bad air" day

We've been struggling out in these parts in recent days. The air quality has been terrible, to say the least.

Last weekend, the girls had a regatta in Welland. On the way down, I thought the fog had rolled in, the air was so thick. But it was just more smog, blanketing the countryside as far as we could see (which wasn't far.) One of the rowers heard on the radio that outside activities should be limited to 15 minutes...hmmm.

I wonder how long it will be before we are forced to start taking this air quality thing seriously. In recent days, it's been above 30 C most days, and the humidex has been over 40 C. Yet nothing really has changed for most of us. People still drive everywhere, work continues, traffic is heavy, sports events continues. But the doctors are warning us that we're suffering, even if we don't notice it right at the moment.

After her race, Kelly was having trouble breathing deeply, the same problem she had last summer after big races. I don't think there's much doubt that the bad air is having an effect. It's going to become a bigger issue as we go along. For now, we're just trying to stay cool and get through it.

By the way, the photo up top is from Fanshawe Lake near London. That's where the Summer Games trials were held a couple of weeks ago. Blogger just set up a new posting service, so I'm experimenting with posting a pic to the blog. Nice shot, eh? The air was a lot cleaner then...

How much stuff do you carry around?

If you're like me, you probably end up carting around way too much stuff on a daily basis. But what to do?

Over at Celsius 1414 Robert Daeley considers all the stuff that people carry:

For an era when millions of urban folks have supposedly left behind the burdens of a rural existence, we sure are burdening ourselves like pack mules. Take a look around at the next business gathering, especially if there are a lot of geeks in the room -- check out the bulging cargo pants and Bat-Belts of devices, the modern geek's pocket protectors. Wonder at the laptop bags and suitcases with hidden crannies stuffed full of all manner of supplies.

Check out the full post and consider where you fit in on this spectrum.

Proud (but Sad) Papa...Summer Games Rowing Update

It's Father's Day, but it's hard to feel really happy today. Both of my daughters were trying out for the Ontario Rowing Team that's going to Regina in August for the Canada Summer Games. But alas...they both missed the cut today.

Both Kelly and Jaime had a good shot at the team. They have been training hard all year, and were very excited about their prospects. Heather and I were in London on Friday and Saturday for the trials. I was there with my new stop watch that the kids gave me for my birthday. It lets me keep track of their stroke rate, just like a real rowing geek, so I love it. Last night, we were the only people watching from the grandstand...But when we left to come home last night we were optimistic that we'd get good news this morning.

But about 9, Jaime phoned in tears. She and Kelly and Kelly's boyfriend, Spencer Brewer, all lost out in the final decisions. They were devastated. In fact, they were so upset they booted it out of there without their boats, which they had to go back and pick up after breakfast.

My heart aches at times like this. Sometimes it's really hard to be a parent and watch your kids have to deal with tough lessons. You want so much to help but there's really nothing to do but be supportive and let them know how proud you are of their dedication and their talent. They did their best and that's all you can ask. In the end, the decision was made and now they have to accept that. Still...it would have been fun for them to have rowed in their hometown.

There's a part of me that can't help feeling my kids got shafted, I've got to admit. Rowing is an elite sport, no question about it, and sometimes it seems like who you know and where you're from count as much or more as anything else...but that's probably just me tasting those sour grapes. So I won't dwell on it.

For now, it means both Kelly and Jaime can turn their sites to the Henley Regatta in early August. And their prospects for doing well there with the Leander Boat Club look really good...so now the training continues, but with a different goal in mind. This really is a great sport.

As for Father's Day...well, I've got the best kids in the world. Jaime just called and says they've both recovered from their shock and disappointment and now they're on their way home. And Cory just called because he was thinking of me. That's all I really need to hear.

Why is "real news" losing ground?

Do you watch "The Daily Show with John Stewart?"

If you do, and it seems that a lot of people are, then you know it's a show about the day's events that prides itself on delivering "fake news." Yet, more and more Americans (and I suspect Canadians as well) claim it as one of their best sources of news of the day.

This article from MediaChannel.org takes a look at the phenomenon of fake news and what it says about the current state of journalism. It's a good read.

And by the way, The Daily Show is on most CTV stations at midnight, after the local news (and 11 on the Comedy Channel). Try it, you'll like it.

Know your ring tones

I wish there was a way to capture this on film. I'm sitting at Union Station, in Toronto, waiting to go out for dinner with my brother-in-law from Vancouver. He's here in town on business, and we've arranged to meet downtown. I had some time to kill, so I'm camped out in the Via lounge area, where I've got Internet access.

But what is really cracking me up is the guy sitting next to me. For the last five minutes, his cell phone has been ringing and he keeps answering it. "Hello?" he shouts. "Hello?" again, a little louder. "HELLO!?" he's shouting, now for the fourth or fifth time. It's clear that whoever is calling is trying to drive him crazy...at least judging by how red his face is getting as his frustration mounts. It's very, very funny.

What he doesn't seem to realize (unlike the rest of us, apparently) is that the ringing he's hearing is actually the notification for an incoming text message. At least that's what it sounds like to me. And sure enough, each time he holds the phone up to his ear, I can see the flashing light that indicates a message.

I'm torn as to what I should do. Do I tell him? Or do I let him keep trying to figure out what the heck is happening? It's certainly entertaining for the rest of us...although it is getting a bit tiresome. His shouting is getting louder and louder and he's obviously losing his cool. An interesting social experience, in a perverse, downtown Toronto kind of way.

Finally, I can't take any more.

"Excuse me," I say, tapping him lightly on the arm. "But I think that signal means you've got a text message or a voice mail, not a phone call."

"What the hell is a text message?" he asks, turning towards me with the phone still plastered to the side of his head, looking at me suspiciously. I don't think he realizes I'm talking about his phone.

"I think the ringing is because there's an incoming text message. Someone is sending you a message, like an e-mail, on your phone," I try to explain, pointing.

Slowly, he takes the phone away from his ear and looks at it, not appearing to understand what I'm talking about. So I point at the tiny screen on his phone, which looks to me to have something written on it. Sure enough, as he looks at it, I can see the gears click into place and his face starts to turn red again. But this time, it's not from yelling.

"Well, I'll be damned," he mutters to himself, giving me an embarassed look, not surprising in the circumstances. Then he glances around at the other people in the lounge. Several pairs of eyes look back at him, most of them with smiles and one lady is laughing out loud.

Without another word, he picks up his briefcase and heads out of there, looking to read his newly discovered message somewhere where he won't disrupt anyone's concentration.

Suddenly, the phone in my pocket rings, startling me. As I open it, I do a double check, just to make sure it's really an incoming call. "This time, there is someone calling," I confirm to the others, who smile back. Time to head off for dinner.

Why I haven't been writing much

OK, this isn't the real reason why I haven't been too active. But this article in today's Globe is in the ball park.

Career's columnist Judith Timson talks about "last-minute-itis" and how it's sweeping the nation. Even stay-at-homes like me, with little apparent reason to be behind in what I do seem to be affected by it. Whatever it's cause, I do seem to be behind the eight-ball on all kinds of things. Like for instance, I'm supposed to be at the university in a few minutes to meet somebody...so I'd better run.

A really clever ad

The Cult of Mac blog has a really cool, clever ad. Check it out.

Honour over the years

So I’m tidying up my desk this morning, and I came across several notes to myself buried in the stacks of papers that always litter my office. Even though I’ve now bought a personal shredder to try to get rid of all this clutter.

Anyway, the notes remind me of interesting things I’ve seen that I think would make a good blog posting. I’m pretty good about noticing little items – but far less good about getting around to actually putting them up on The Daily Upload.

Anyway, here are a couple of those (now dated) memos I wrote to myself. Together, they make for one very long Daily Upload…so grab a coffee and read on.

VE celebrations

The stories about the veterans returning to Holland for the 60th anniversary of VE day really struck home. My Dad was over there back in 1945, in Holland. I’m not sure what he was doing on that day. He was with the Royal Canadian Engineers, who were coming along behind the front lines and were responsible for rebuilding all the bridges and getting the infrastructure back up and running. Dad was one of those veterans who didn’t talk much about what he did during that time. I wish I had found out more while he was alive but he wasn’t much for war stories.

On VE Day, I went through Dad’s old Army trunk that I had brought with me out here to Hamilton. But it doesn’t say much about his time overseas. I found a brief outline of the unit that Dad served with. From what I can see, he was sent from England to France on July 25, 1944, about six weeks after D-day. From there, they worked their way north, through Belgium and into Holland early in 1945. The record ends at the end of April, 1945, with the unit in Almello, Holland.

Dad would have been 89 this year, probably too old to have attended any of the events in Holland. Nor would he have been likely to, since he never took much of an interest in those types of celebrations while he was alive. Still, it was such a momentous time for this country and for all the young men like him whose lives were forever shaped by those events in the 1940s. How I would love to be able to talk to him now.

I had my own brush with the kindness and amazing gratitude of the Dutch towards Canadians back in the 1970s, when I was in Europe. A friend and I were hitchhiking in the evening in southern Holland, trying to find the place were my sister was staying. Just outside a small town, a local picked us up and offered to drive us all the way there (about 30 minutes or so.)

When we arrived, we thanked him for the ride. It turned out that he had only planned to go a few blocks to pick up some groceries, but when he saw we were Canadians, he decided to take us anywhere we wanted. That kind of reception and gratitude was much in evidence again during the VE-Day celebrations, and it brought back a lot of good memories for me.

Political decorum (or lack thereof)

What is there to say? The spectacle of what’s been going on in Ottawa the past few weeks has been disheartening, to say the least. I’m no fan of the Martin government but I am a fan of Parliament and due process. But the kind of crass political opportunism we’ve seen from all sides lately reminds me why I got out of covering politics a decade ago back in Saskatchewan.

I had the best job in journalism (in my humble opinion) when I was at the legislature in Regina. Going to work every day in the legislature was wonderful. The place was impressive from an architectural point of view (stunning, actually) and I discovered I loved the intricacies of parliamentary procedure. I was around when the Tories and the NDP got into the infamous bell-ringing episode over the SaskEnergy bill in 1989 when the NDP let the division ring continuously for 17 days. It was a record and writing about all the ins and outs of the political shenanigans was great fun. But still, it was politics and no one pretended otherwise.

But as the years went by, I noticed a decline in the conduct of our various MLAs in the House. As I became more familiar with the rules and history of the Legislature, I noticed how little interest many of the members had for the place they had been elected to. Big P politics was taking over the process, and the clerks of the legislature were fighting a losing battle to keep things going.

When I began covering politics, I liked a lot of the politicians I worked with. But by the time I left, I realized that I wouldn’t have wanted to be friends with many of them, were our paths to cross in different circumstances. I decided that I was tired of the whole political theatre stuff. And it doesn’t look like things have gotten much better, does it?

I remember when things were at their lowest, which was just after the 1995 election and the scandal around the PC party’s use of communication accounts for partisan purposes was just hitting the papers. I was covering the story from some angle, and I was interviewing the Clerk of the Legislature, Gwen Ronyk. It was her office that had blown the whistle on the whole thing and first got the RCMP involved in what was becoming a very large and lengthy investigation. Eventually, a lot of Tory MLAs and party workers would end up in jail over it.

I asked Gwen for her take on what was happening, since she was one of the people who interpreted all the rules of the House to the various parties. “The thing you have to remember,” she told me, “is that we have a political system that is based on the honour of the individuals who are elected here. Our rules don’t state what is allowed, they only spell out what is not allowed.”

“An honourable system only works if honourable people are using it,” she added. Although she didn’t say anything more, her meaning was pretty clear to me. Not too long after that, I decided to hang up my journalist’s spurs and moved over to corporate communications with SaskTel, which was another whole kettle of fish entirely. But that’s a story for another time.

Times when you wish you'd had a camera...

I was at a conference this weekend in Toronto called The Naked Communicator." A provocative title, no doubt, but not what you're probably thinking.

No, it was a bunch of fellow IABC'ers (the International Association of Business Communicators) and we were talking about the need for trust and transparency in today's business communications. Very hot stuff, don't you know?

If you're interested, the incoming chair of the IABC, Warren Bickford (who hails from my home town of Regina) has written a good summary on the IABC Cafe or the Chairman's blog, as it's known. So check it out for a summary of what went on.

But what I really wanted to tell you was about a short walk I took down Yonge St, just like Ian Tyson did many years ago. I was taking a short break from the conference, which was being held at the historic Arts and Letters Club on Elm St. It's a truly fascinating place, as you can read about on their website.

I had stopped for a coffee at a pizza place on the Yonge St. Strip, when these four guys walked in. They were about 20 years old and dressed in matching black jackets, pants and ball caps. I figured they were with a sports team visiting the city or something like that. But something about the way the servers behind the counter were staring at them caught my attention. Something was up, and when they paid for their slices and turned around, I could see what.

They were identical quadruplets. Like peas in a pod, you might say. I've never seen anything like it, and judging from the way that conversation ceased in the busy pizza place, none of the rest of the patrons had every seen anything like it either. Every eye in the place was on these guys, and not a word was spoken. The four of them didn't seem to be bothered at all by the stunned silence. They just took their pizza and walked out on to the street. But I think they're dressing alike was designed to get just that kind of a response. It sure worked.

And of course, my camera was sitting back at my brother's house, secure in my suitcase. Darn.

But the strange string of events wasn't quite over.

When I left the pizza place, there was a crowd gathering on the sidewalk and it was getting really, really noisy. And no, they weren't all looking at the quads. I don't know where those guys went but I didn't see them around.

Instead, I looked up, like everyone else, and watched while a huge Sikorsky helicopter dropped an 80-foot cable down to a group of workmen below. They tied off some construction beams, which were then hoisted into the air and up to the top of a nearby building. What an incredible racket! And what a thing to see in the downtown of a big city on a Saturday afternoon! And of course, with no camera in my hand!

The entire square at Gerrard and Yonge was blocked off by police, of course, to make sure that no one got near the helicopter's load, but just the same, the whole process seemed a little precarious. It was a windy day, and once the load of beams got up in the air, they started swinging wildly. It would have been interesting to see them slam through one side of the glass-walled building they were heading towards, but the pilot got things under control in time and no damage was done. Interesting process.

Excitement over, I headed back to the conference. Just another day in the big city.

Back home again

HomeAgain_04
Originally uploaded by Dave Traynor.

Hard to believe, but Jaime has finished her first year at the University of Victoria. So now she's back in Hamilton, where she'll be rowing at Leander for the summer. She'll also be putting in some hours at a local grocery store, where she worked last year, and perhaps teaching the "Learn-to-Row" sessions at the Club this summer. And yes, those bags are as heavy as they look!

Her timing is good. Last week, Cory moved out to live with three other guys. They're not too far away, but it's strange not to have him living with us any more.

And the biggest change now that Jaime is home again? Having someone around in the morning to fight with over the Globe and Mail and talk about politics...it's nice to have her back.